My Shroud of White
by TolkienScholar
Summary: Asked to investigate a murder case in order to clear the accused, whether guilty or not, Sherlock finds himself falling in love with the murderess... A three-way crossover, in which Sherlock solves a Hercule Poirot case to save a queenly defendant who may or may not be innocent. Please read and review! Constructive criticism is encouraged; I'd love to find ways to improve.
1. Prologue

**I own nothing. Sherlock Holmes is the property of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and BBC. Irene and Gen (Attolia and Eugenides) are the property of Meghan Whalen Turner. The plot is based on _Sad Cypress_ by Agatha Christie.**

* * *

Come away, come away, death,  
And in sad cypress let me be laid;  
Fly away, fly away, breath;  
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.  
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,  
O prepare it!  
My part of death, no one so true  
Did share it.

-SHAKESPEARE

Prologue

"_Irene Elinor Attolis. You stand charged upon this indictment with the murder of Mary Gerrard upon the 27th of July last. Are you guilty or not guilty?"_

Irene Attolis held her body straight, her chin raised. It was a manly chin, and a stubborn jaw. The high cheekbones and translucent skin could not make her face truly feminine, nor could the long black hair, coiled around her head in a style more befitting the Middle Ages than twenty-first century London. Her eyes flashed black beneath dark brows ever so slightly cocked.

There was a silence—quite a noticeable silence. The courtroom held its breath. Irene heard the thoughts of Sir Edwin Bulmer, Counsel for the Defense: _She's going to plead guilty. She's lost her nerve._

Irene Attolis never lost her nerve.

Irene's lips parted. _"Not guilty,"_ she said.

Counsel for the Defense sank back, passing a handkerchief over his brow.

Sir Samuel Attenbury was on his feet, outlining the case for the Crown.

"May it please your lordship, members of the jury, on the 27th of July, at half-past three in the afternoon, Mary Gerrard died at Hunterbury, Maidensford…"

His voice ran on, sonorous and pleasing to the ear. It lulled Irene almost into unconsciousness. From the simple and concise narrative, only an occasional phrase seeped through to her conscious mind.

"…Case a peculiarly simple and straightforward one… It is the duty of the Crown… prove motive and opportunity… No one, as far as can be seen, had any motive to kill this unfortunate girl, Mary Gerrard, except the accused. A young girl of charming disposition—liked by everybody—without, one would have said, an enemy in the world…"

_Mary. Mary Gerrard. How long ago it all seemed now. No longer real…_

"Your attention will be particularly directed to the following considerations: 1. What opportunities and means had the accused for administering poison? 2. What motive had she for so doing?

"It will be my duty to call before you witnesses who can help you to form a true conclusion on these matters…

"As regards the poisoning of Mary Gerrard, I shall endeavor to show you that no one had any opportunity to commit this crime except the accused…"

Detached words came drifting through the thick fog around her.

"… sandwiches… fish paste… empty house…"

A face watched her from among the ghoulish crowd, handsome, cold, white, his eyes bright with interest.

_He's trying to see just exactly why I did it. He's trying to get inside my head to see what I thought—what I felt…_

She felt nothing. Faces came through to her vision like pinpricks through a heavy, muffling veil…

Gen. Always Gen—always, ever since she could remember—since those days at Hunterbury among the raspberries and up in the warren and down by the brook. Gen—Gen—Gen…

Other faces. Nurse O'Brien, her mouth slightly open, her freckled, fresh face thrust forward. Nurse Hopkins looking smug, smug and implacable. Peter Lord's face—Peter Lord—so kind, so sensible—but looking now—what was it—lost? Minding all this terribly, while she herself, the star performer, didn't mind at all!

"The facts in this case are extremely easy to follow and are not in dispute. I shall put them before you quite simply. From the very beginning…"

_The beginning… The beginning? When had it all begun?_


	2. Chapter 1

Irene stared coldly down at the letter in her hand. It was ill-written, badly spelled, on cheap pink paper. It read:

THIS IS TO WARN YOU,

I'm naming no Names but there's Someone sucking up to your Aunt and if you're not kareful you'll get Cut Out of Everything. Girls Are very Artful and Old Ladies is Soft when Young Ones suck up to Them and Flatter them What I say is You'd best come down and see for Yourself whats Going On it's not right you and the Young Gentleman should be Done Out of What's yours—and She's very Artful and the Old Lady might Pop off at anytime.

WELL-WISHER

Irene was still staring at the letter, her black brows drawn together in distaste, when the door opened. The maid announced, "Mr. Welman," and Gen came in.

Gen! A throb of sudden pleasure, and at once the reminder, always, of the need for restraint. Her face resolved into a mask, the barest smile on her lips. She had to be matter-of-fact, unemotional. Gen loved her, but he didn't feel about her the way she felt about him; that was only too obvious. The first sight of him did something to her, twisted her heart round so that it almost hurt. Absurd that a man—only a man, an ordinary young man—should do that to her!

"Hello, Gen," she said lightly.

"Hallo, darling," Gen said. He glanced down at the letter in her hand. "You're looking dismal today. Is it a bill?"

Irene shook her head.

"I thought it might be—midsummer, you know—when the fairies dance, and the accounts rendered come tripping along!" Gen tripped along to a chair situated near her desk, spun it around, and deposited himself on the seat, one leg hanging over each side. His chin rested adorably on his hands. He reached out over the seat back to pick up her tea mug off the desk. He took a sip and made a face. "It's cold."

Irene drew her eyes away, afraid they might betray her affection. "It's an anonymous letter," she said, retreating to less perilous matters.

Gen sat up. The smile slid off his face, and his eyebrows went up until they almost disappeared under his sandy forelock. "An anonymous letter?"

"Yes." She moved a step closer to the desk. "I'd better tear it up, I suppose."

She could have done it—she almost did. Gen and anonymous letters were two things that ought not to come together. She might have thrown it away and thought no more about it.

But he would have stopped her. He would have dug it out of the rubbish bin, pieced it back together if necessary. His curiosity was far more strongly developed than his fastidiousness.

"Perhaps you'd better read it first," she said. "Then we'll burn it. It's about Aunt Laura."

"Aunt Laura?"

"Yes. Don't be such a parrot." She handed him the letter.

Gen read it, frowned, and handed it back. "Burn it, definitely. The nerve of some people!"

Irene said, "One of the servants, do you think?"

"I guess so." He hesitated. "I wonder who it is."

Irene didn't have to ask to know that he was no longer talking about the author of the letter. "I think," she said slowly, "that it must be Mary Gerrard."

Gen furrowed his brow. "Who?"

"The daughter of the people at the lodge. You must remember her as a child? Aunt Laura was always fond of the girl and took an interest in her. She paid for her schooling and for various extras—piano lessons and French and such."

"Oh, yes. I remember her now," Gen said. "Scrawny kid, all legs and arms, with a lot of messy fair hair."

Irene nodded. "You probably haven't seen her since those summer days when my parents were abroad. You've not been down at Hunterbury as often as I have, and she's been abroad in Germany lately. But we used to rout her out and play with her when we were all kids."

"What's she like now?" Gen asked with interest.

"She's turned out quite nice-looking. Good manners and all that. With her education, you'd never take her for old Gerrard's daughter now."

"Gone all ladylike has she?"

"Yes. I think, as a result, she doesn't get on very well at the lodge. Mrs. Gerrard dies some years ago, you know, and Mary and her father don't get on. He jeers at her schooling and her 'fine ways.'"

Gen shook his head. "People never dream what harm they can do by educating someone! Often it's cruelty, not kindness!"

"Because it makes them unhappy at home or because school is a bore?" Irene asked coolly.

"Both." Gen laid his head on his hands and peered up at her through his lashes like a curious child. "So tell me, how's she planning to do us out of everything?"

Irene looked away. "I don't know that she's planning anything, Gen. I suppose she is up at the house a good deal. She reads to Aunt Laura, I know, since she had her stroke. Nurse O'Brien has a brogue you could cut with a knife; I don't wonder Aunt Laura prefers Mary."

Gen snorted. "No one was ever done out of an inheritance because a girl was a good reader."

"Exactly."

There was silence for a long moment.

"You know, Irene, I believe we ought to go down," Gen said at last.

Irene blinked. "Because of this?"

"No, no—not at all…"

Irene raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, fine, yes! Foul as that letter is, there may be some truth behind it. I mean, the old girl is pretty ill—"

"Yes, Gen."

Gen flashed a charming smile. "And the money does matter—to you and me, Irene."

"Yes, Gen."

"It's not that I'm mercenary. But after all, Aunt Laura has said over and over and over again that you and I are her only family ties, her own niece and her husband's nephew. She's always given us to understand that at her death all she's got would come to one or the other—or more probably both—of us. And—it's a pretty large sum, Irene."

"Yes, Gen."

"Stop 'Yes, Gen'-ing me! You know it is! Just the other day she told me that she'd been exceedingly lucky always in her investments, and she was an heiress to start with. Besides Uncle Henry being comfortably off when he met her."

"Yes, Gen."

"It's no joke keeping up Hunterbury, and there'll be death duties, of course…"

"Don't talk about that just yet."

Gen's mouth snapped shut, a little too playfully for Irene's taste. "You make us sound like a couple of vultures, just waiting for her to die so we can swoop in on the spoils. I, at least, am not too eager for her to die."

"Neither am I," Gen protested.

"Really."

"Really!"

There was another long silence. Then Irene said, "Aunt Laura has never told us definitely just how she has left her money, has she?"

"That doesn't matter!" Gen said. He made as if to brush it aside with his hand. "In all probability she's divided it between us; but if not—if she's left all of it or most of it to you, as her own flesh and blood—then, darling, I'll still share in it, because I'm going to marry you—and if the old pet thinks the majority should go to me as the male representative of the Welmans, that's still all right, because you're marrying me." He grinned at her affectionately. "Lucky we happen to love each other. You do love me, don't you, Irene?"

"Yes." She said it coldly, almost primly.

"Yes!" Gen mimicked. "You're adorable, Irene. That little air of yours—aloof—untouchable. It's that quality of yours that made me love you, I believe."

Irene caught her breath. "Is it?"

"Yes. With you, I never know—I'm never sure—any minute you might turn around in that cool, detached way of yours and say you'd changed your mind—quite coolly, like that—without batting an eyelash! You're fascinating. You're like a work of art, so—so finished!"

He went on: "You know, I think ours will be the perfect marriage: we're good friends, we've got a lot of tastes in common, we know each other through and through, we've got all the advantages of cousinship without the disadvantages of blood relationship…" He sighed contentedly. "I shall never get tired of you, because you're so elusive. You may get tired of me, though. I'm such an ordinary sort of chap—"

"Nonsense!" Irene snapped.

Gen laughed. "My sweet!"

He kissed her.

"Aunt Laura has a pretty shrewd idea of how it is with us, I think," he added, "although we haven't been down since we finally fixed it up. It sort of gives us an excuse, doesn't it, for going down?"

"Yes. I was just thinking the other day—"

Gen finished the sentence for her: "—that we hadn't been down as often as we might. I thought that, too. When she first had her stroke, we went down almost every other weekend. And now it must be almost two months since we were there."

"We'd have gone if she'd asked for us, at once."

"Yes, and I suppose she knows that. And she likes Nurse O'Brien and is well looked after. All the same, perhaps we have been a bit slack. I'm not talking from the money point of view now."

Irene nodded.

"So that filthy letter has done some good, after all! We'll go down to protect our interests and because we're fond of the old dear!"

He lit a match and set fire to the letter, taking it from Irene's hand.

"Wonder who wrote it?" he said. "Not that it matters. … Someone who was 'on our side,' as we used to say when we were kids. Perhaps they've done us a good turn, too. Jim Partington's mother went out to the Riviera to live, had a handsome young Italian doctor to attend her, became quite crazy about him, and left him every penny she had. Jim and his sisters tried to upset the will but couldn't."

"Go away, you money-grubbing pig," said Irene, pushing at him. Her face was as stiff as plaster.

Gen leapt up, laughing, and stole a kiss before dashing out the door.


	3. Chapter 2

"Please, Sherlock. Just—just try it, all right? Just this once?"

"Yes, but it's not just this once, is it, John?" Sherlock demanded. "Not if you and Mary have anything to do with it."

"Yes, well, why not? Give me just one reason you can't go out on a date with her. Just—just one."

"Because I'm Sherlock Holmes."

"That's not a reason."

_Water on the counter. Grime on the sinks. Streaky mirror. Not cleaned well, not in a long time._

"Sherlock, are you listening to me?"

"Because you have a hard enough time living with me; you wouldn't want to force that on any poor woman."

"Sherlock!"

_A sharp smell rising off the counter. Blood? No. Iron in the water._

"Mary and I put a lot of work into planning this evening; the least you could do is cooperate."

Sherlock laughed.

"Fine, then tell me this: what's wrong with her, Sherlock?"

"Oh, there's nothing wrong with her," Sherlock answered, ruffling his dark curls in front of the dirty mirror. Nothing wrong here. Nothing wrong anywhere, not for weeks.

"No. There's not. She's a perfectly nice girl—Stop that, your hair's messy enough." John made a snatch at Sherlock's arm. Sherlock stepped back.

"Um… Excuse me…" A short, awkward young man who had just come out of a stall behind them stood looking up at them uncomfortably.

"Sure, there you go," John said, moving back from the sinks. He waited until the young man had finished and scurried out the door before turning to Sherlock again.

"Now you will go back out there, and you will be civil to her. And that means no more corpse jokes, do you understand?"

"I am perfectly willing to be civil; I simply don't intend to be her date."

John clapped a hand to his head and groaned.

Sherlock went on relentlessly, "You got us into this mess; I suppose you are capable of getting us out again. Especially knowing that if Molly's heart gets broken tonight, it will be entirely your fault.

John sighed. "You're impossible, you know that?"

"My brother might have mentioned it a few times."

"Fine. I give up. Let's go back in; they're probably wondering could possibly have taken us so long in the men's room."

"Indeed," Sherlock said as he followed John out the door.


End file.
